Note: This article was originally published in The Greeley Tribune, Sunday Business Section, June 30, 2005

Web Wise: Navigating the landscape of online advertising

Online ad spending totaled over $2.8 billion for the first quarter of 2005, which is "the highest quarterly total ever" according to a recent report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (http://www.iab.net/). This explosive growth is no surprise to Search Engine Marketers. Online ads are the fastest and most inexpensive way to get your Web site in front of your target audience in the search engines.

Online advertising can encompass different things, such as banner ads, half-page ads, skyscraper ads and other sizes of ads. Today let's focus on two of the most popular ways to advertise your company or organization in the Search Engines: Pay-Per-Click (PPC) listings and Google Ads.

Pay-per-click listings
Pay-per-click listings appear in Yahoo, MSN and many other search engines. They're titled "sponsor results" in Yahoo and "sponsored sites" in MSN. Recently Yahoo re-branded its subsidiary, Overture, and now calls it "Yahoo Search Marketing Products."

Anyone with a Web site and a marketing budget can pay Yahoo Search to place Pay-Per-Click listings at the top, bottom and side of the page when someone searches by certain keywords. When you click on one of those sponsored sites, the advertiser is charged .10 cents or more, depending on how popular the keyword is. You can compete with brand name companies even if you're a sole proprietor.

Though Yahoo Search has tried to make it simple to set up your paid advertisements, there are hoops to jump through with their editorial guidelines and if you don't jump through these hoops you risk getting your ads rejected. These guidelines are meant to keep the search engines from appearing as though they are providing information and not displaying ads, so the language you use in your listings cannot sound promotional. If it does, your listing gets rejected. It's challenging to write a 40-character title and 190 characters of text that entice the potential customer yet adhere to the editorial guidelines.

Measure results and fix poor results immediately
Measure the effectiveness of your click-through traffic by doing the following: log into your Yahoo Search account and review the number of clicks your PPC's have received to see which keywords and listings are bringing in the most traffic. Then log in to your Web site's traffic analysis program and review statistics such as number of visits; which pages are being viewed the most; entry/exit pages; keywords; search engine referrals and look at your bounce rate. If your PPC's are bringing you traffic but no one is buying anything, your Web site probably needs fixing to make it more user-friendly. You wouldn't have a grand opening of your bricks-n-mortar store if it were in poor shape, right? Don't bring traffic to your site if your Web site is in poor shape.

Another reason why your PPC's might not be working could be that you're inadvertently "baiting and switching"-your PPC listing talks about one thing but after clicking it and landing in your site, does the landing page talk about the same thing? If not, you've confused the potential customer and she'll probably leave your site. The bounce rate tells you which pages people are landing in and then leaving without visiting any other pages.

Google Ad Campaigns
Google Ads work almost the same as PPC's except that Google reaches more people since its share of the search engine market is around 34.7% with Yahoo at 31.9% and MSN with 16.3%. Google Ads have a lot of nice features that help you continually measure and improve the effectiveness of your ads. You can even program your ads to have "negative" keywords so that your ad clicks aren't wasted on the wrong audience.

When you click on a Google Ad the advertiser is charged a few cents or a few dollars per click. After their daily budget is used up, their ad disappears for the rest of the day. More effective results occur if you can spend at least $5 per day on your Google Ad. There are no costs other than per click.

Navigating the landscape of online advertising can be a bit overwhelming if you're not familiar with some basic knowledge. But if you're ready to advertise online, you'll be surprised at how easily measurable the results are and how quickly you can take action to improve results.

Lori Gama-White owns DaGama Web Studio in Greeley, Colorado. Developing strategic, results-oriented Web sites since 1997, Lori Gama-White and her team of Web professionals are passionate about helping people get their businesses on to the Internet. For more information, questions or comments, call 970-378-7822 or e-mail .

© 2005 Lori Gama-White - All Rights Reserved - http://www.dagamawebstudio.com
Please ask permission before copying and redistributing this article. You may link to this article as long as you include copyright/author information.
Thank you.